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The urban problems that the pandemic poses are not new problems, they have been the object of urban planning reflection since the founding of the discipline with the industrial revolution. The policies of growth and development have thus become an opportunity for the accumulation of wealth for small groups, while the negative effects on the environment as well as social inequalities have not been (and do not constitute) a source of concern. The time has come to question the ethics of doing and governing architecture and urban planning, Covid-19, like the current environmental crisis, does not require generic answers but precise field choices. The considerations in this text address several topics. First of all, the relationship between pandemic, environmental crisis and inequality. This problematic interweaving has repercussions on the organisation of cities and processes of urban “neo-colonialism” that fail to recognise the complexity of the urban phenomenon in the world. Finally, the association between the pandemic, the environmental crisis and the city, which presupposes urban visions and shared projects, but appears increasingly directed towards marketing strategies, to the detriment of governance practices.

Keywords: environmental crisis, inequalities, project, southern urbanism

Accepted: December 2020 | Published Online: January 2021 DOI: 10.13128/contest-12289 | full text

The global COVID-19 pandemic threatens much of the theory of human proxemics, and raises fundamental questions about human evolution and contemporary life. If we evolved in close contact with each other for thousands of years, does “social distance” contradict this fact? In today’s world, what should be local and what should be global? How much human suffering and death should be tolerated to “save the economy”? These and other questions are examined in this essay.

Accepted: June 2020 | Published Online: July 2020 DOI: 10.13128/contest-11936 | full text

Durante il periodo dell’emergenza COVID-19, la maggior parte dei processi partecipativi in corso in vari paesi è stata messa in pausa. Nel frattempo, varie reti che mettono in dialogo facilitatori, consulenti, funzionari pubblici e politici impegnati in percorsi partecipativi hanno cominciato ad interrogarsi sul “dopo”: su come muteranno le persone e quanto dovranno cambiare i percorsi partecipativi della “nuova normalità”. A partire dalle testimonianze raccolte dall’autore in varie reti internazionali, il testo cerca di proporre una sintesi di alcuni punti comuni emersi dei dibattiti di questi mesi e di alcune esperienze che hanno tentato di iniziare a ripensare i percorsi partecipativi di coinvolgimento degli abitanti nelle politiche pubbliche. L’autore identifica alcuni dei principali mutamenti paradigmatici che possono dare una direzione nuova per ripensare i percorsi partecipativi nel periodo della graduale riapertura delle attività bloccate dalla pandemia, verso il superamento di approcci di stampo assistenzialista, paternalista e “dall’alto in basso” come quelli che hanno caratterizzato le fasi più difficili dell’emergenza.

Accepted: June 2020 | Published Online: July 2020 DOI: 10.13128/contest-11935 | full text

The pandemic is part of a vast and inexorable process of changing the environment and its balance. We must go back to dealing with this process which has led to a profound change in the notion of context. The article reflects on the origins of this process and on its awareness.

Accepted: October 2020 | Published Online: November 2020 DOI: 10.13128/contest-12174 | full text

The document “Recovery plan for Italy 2020-2022”, known as Colao Plan has been presented in June 2020. Waiting the most programmatic decisions regarding how to use the Ricovery Found resources, the article presents an analysis of the chapters dedicated to the topics that most directly affect the territory and the city: 1) Infrastructures and the environment, the driving force for relaunch, 2) Green and hydrogeological instability, 3) Housing, highlighting the limits of approach and of strategy.

Accepted: October 2020 | Published Online: November 2020 DOI: 10.13128/contest-12023 | full text

Cromohs Journal

Lazarets Never Aimed to Stop Circulations

David Do Paço , Sciences Po, CHSP, France

The history of lazarets lies at the crossroads between the history of circulations and that of pandemics. Initially built to isolate and treat plague patients, they were then closely associated with the economic development of the early modern European states, and ensured the development of safe circulation in the Mediterranean and Central Europe. Here, through the example of the lazaret of Trieste, we can also understand that a lazaret was a micropolis, and the social and cultural importance of such micropolis for the city, the history, and the memory of Trieste. This history is also that of an empire, of its governance and of the many actors operating at the local, regional and global levels, despite an ever-present pandemic risk

Published Online: April 8, 2020 DOI: 10.13128/cromohs-11314| Video | full text

Cromohs Journal

The Turks and the Plague in the 18th Century

Ann Thomson,  European University Institute, Italy

Eighteenth-century European views of the Ottomans reveal a complex set of politico-religious interests, as the Ottoman Empire declined militarily and gradually became less an object of fear. It was associated with certain clichéd images, in particular of despotism and fanaticism. Among these associations was the prevalence of the plague, which was endemic in many parts of the Ottoman empire, while after 1720 it no longer ravaged Europe. While this situation was often explained by the climate, many authors associated the prevalence of the plague with what they called Turkish “fatalism”, claiming that the Muslim belief in predestination prevented governments and individuals from taking any of the precautions against the disease used by Europeans. Thus the plague became part of the stock of anti-Turkish arguments, used in the justifications for political alignments in the Mediterranean. In the 1780s, an anti-Turkish author like the Frenchman Volney opposed those who supported the Ottomans as a bulwark against Russian expansionism, and argued for their expulsion from Europe and the Mediterranean; he went as far as identifying the Turks with the contagion, claiming that it was brought from Istanbul and had never been known in the Mediterranean before the arrival of the Turks.

Published Online: April 22, 2020 DOI: 10.13128/cromohs-11563| Video | full text

Cromohs Journal

Disposing of corpses during World War I

Romain Fathi, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia

Belligerents that took part in the First World War could not have anticipated the lethality of the conflict. Within a few weeks of the war’s outbreak, armies were overwhelmed with corpses. Their existing policies and logistics to dispose of dead bodies were insufficient. As corpses piled up, they became a real epidemiological threat. Armies were relatively mobile, and it was feared that contagion from corpses to soldiers could also spread to civilian populations. When corpses putrefy, bacteria multiply and corpses become agents for the propagation of pathogens, particularly if the bodies were infected with typhoid, cholera or dysentery prior to their death. As a result of the threat posed by unprecedented number of corpses, First World War armies set up what I refer to as ‘body disposal policies and practices’. Those were created and trialled to dispose of corpses as efficiently and safely as possible through mass graves and cremation for instance, mobilising many soldiers, gravediggers and complex logistics.

Published Online: April 30, 2020 DOI: 10.13128/cromohs-11563| Video |

Cromohs Journal

Thucydides and the Plague of Athens (430-426 B.C.)

Spyridon Rangos, University of Patras, Greece

In 431 B.C. a war exploded in Greece between the two major political, economic and military powers of the time, Athens and Sparta, and their allies. Generally known as the Peloponnesian War, this great war spanned an entire period of 27 years and led to the total defeat of Athens (404 B.C.). In the summer of 430 B.C., a deadly epidemic broke out in Athens. The first phase of the disease lasted two whole years. In 427 B.C. the epidemic struck back in a somewhat weakened form for about a year. The Athenians lost 5,450 heavy-armed warriors, 300 equestrians of noble birth, a high number of auxiliary soldiers and a still higher of civilians (citizens, resident aliens and slaves). It is estimated that one quarter to almost one third of the entire population passed away (c. 60,000-80,000 people).

Published Online: May 25, 2020 DOI: 10.13128/cromohs-11691| Video | full text

Cromohs Journal

The Yellow Fever and the Italian States in 1804

Paul-Arthur Tortosa, Université de Strasbourg, Belgium

Since the plague pandemic of the 13th century, Italian states have created sanitary institutions to deal with epidemics. However, even though all the Italian states had similar sanitary institutions they reacted quite differently when yellow fever struck Livorno in 1804. This paradox – a variety of political answers to the same biological threat – reveals the inextricable nature of the political, economic, social and diplomatic stakes in the management of epidemics. First, health magistrates played a crucial diplomatic role, for the territories suspected of being infected were subjected to quarantine with serious economic consequences. Second, although health policies were based on uncertain and changing medical knowledge, they were meant to be universal and legitimate. Meanwhile, the population did not remain passive in the face of health measures: the richest managed to circumvent the regulations while the poor fled the infected city.

Published Online: May 25, 2020 DOI: 10.13128/cromohs-11783| Video | full text

Form@re Journal

Challenges and Opportunities Raised by Covid-19 for the Judicial Systems in Europe

Claudia Cavicchioli, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

This contribution examines and analyses the challenges and opportunities created by the spread of Covid-19 for the European justice systems, putting them in relation with educational needs that are arising. The Covid-19 crisis has acted as a stress test, as unexpected as it is energic, for the resilience of national systems and has shed light on the lack or delay in the digitalisation of justice systems, whereas throughout Europe, due to the limited availability of the national systems, recourse to alternative dispute resolution mechanisms has increased. The adjustments that have been made necessary to deal with the period of Covid-19 could radically and permanently change the way justice will be rendered in the post-pandemic world, also creating an opportunity for evolution and modernisation. The need to draw on shared best practices for the development of new protocols to ensure an effective functioning of the justice system must be balanced with the respect of fundamental rights such as access to justice and right to a fair trial. To this end, all stakeholders in the judiciary face a steep learning curve for developing new skills necessary to actively and consciously take part in the paradigm shift that justice is encountering.

Published: 10 December 2020 | DOI: 10.13128/form-10086 | full text

Form@re Journal

Italian prison system facing coronavirus: between troubles and resilience

Carlotta Vignali, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy

This contribution is an analysis on the consequences of the coronavirus spread in the Italian prison system, highlighting concerns and potential prospects of improvements. Like other extremely vulnerable contexts, prisons are affected by the spread of Covid-19, resulting however weaker in providing effective strategies to ensure prevention, health and safety. Due to structural flaws, unhealthy conditions and endemic shortfalls, penitentiaries see a high risk of an outbreak of the illness. The prison crumbling and chronic overcrowded state make social distancing impossible. In addition to this, the coronavirus impact exacerbates pre-existing difficulties of the prison system. In such a dramatic scenario, and in spite of the inadequate government response in providing efficient resources against the virus diffusion, some detention facilities seem to be resilient in fighting back the epidemic, adopting strategies and solutions which could be considered a valuable starting point towards a better way of conceiving punishment.

Published: 18 November 2020 | DOI: 10.13128/form-8556| full text

Journal of Early Modern Studies

Sir Thomas Browne and the Plague

Manfred Pfister , Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Sir Thomas Browne’s little treatise is here published for the first time in an annotated version. It offers illuminating insights in how a prominent practicing physician and scholar from Norwich reacts to the plague hitting England in Early Modern times and the small help the medical knowledge about the plague from Paracelsus to Browne, which he examines with great learning.

Published: July 31, 2020 2020 | DOI: 10.13128/jems-2279-7149-11931| full text

Journal of Early Modern Studies

‘my good sweett mouse’. Letters in Time of Plague

Paola Pugliatti, Università di Firenze, Italy

Among the Henslowe-Alleyn papers donated by Edward Alleyn to Dulwich College in 1619 is a group of letters exchanged in 1593 between the Henslowe household in London, where Alleyn’s young wife Joan then lived, and Edward Alleyn, then touring in the provinces with Lord Strange’s men, when the London theatres were closed on account of the plague. These letters have always been read for the (scanty) contribution they give to the history of Elizabethan theatre. What has not been considered is their pragmatic peculiarity, which illustrates a real, and probably very rare case of collaboration in letter writing. Joan Alleyn’s literacy was probably either incomplete, or null, and the letters sent to Alleyn were written by Henslowe, who was Joan’s step-father, and who, in turn, ‘received’ Alleyn’s letters to Joan and probably read them to her.

Published October 1, 2020 | DOI: 10.13128/jems-2279-7149-12082 | full text

Substantia Journal

A cohort of cancer patients with no reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection: the possible preventive role of Methylene Blue

Marc Henry*, Mireille Summa, Louis Patrick, Laurent Schwartz, Université de Strasbourg, Chimie Moléculaire du Solide, Institut Le Bel, Strasbourg, France

We report the case of a cohort of 2500 French patients treated among others with methylene blue for cancer care. During the COVID-19 epidemics none of them developed influenza-like illness. Albeit this lack of infection might be by chance alone, it is possible that methylene blue might have a preventive effect for COVID-19 infection. This is in line with the antiviral activity of Chloroquine, a Methylene blue derivative. Both Chloroquine and Methylene blue have strong antiviral and anti- inflammatory properties probably linked to the change in intracellular pH and redox state.

Accepted: 2020-03-30 | Published Online: 2020-03-31| DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-888 | full text

Substantia Journal

A Possible Scientific Answer to Covid-19 Among Open Science, Big Data, Old and New Expertise and Knowledge: the Position Paper of Chemistry

Luigi Campanella*, Maurizio Anastasio, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

“The single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance is the virus”. This statement was made by Joshua Lederberg in 1958 in the occasion of his Nobel Lecture. This claim cannot be forgotten in this period while we are looking for a reason of hope and this hope, after ensuring adequate sanitary services and responsible behaviour of citizens, can come only from Science. Medical sciences represent undoubtedly the queen disciplines, but many other disciplines can play a very important role. At this particular moment the basic core of knowledge is provided by the group of biosciences such as medicine, virology, biology, biotechnology. It is fundamental to have an intradisciplinary group that speaks the same language at the start of any research activity.

Accepted: 2020-03-30 | Published Online: 2020-04-01| DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-890 | full text

Substantia Journal

Covid-19: Physical Distancing Will Make Science Closer to Citizen Participation in Decision Making

Stefano Cinti, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

Nowadays, social distancing is mandatory in various countries worldwide. It is defined as a non-pharmaceutical interventions for preventing the spread of COVID-19, by maintaining a distance among people and reducing the frequency of contacts with each other. However, the correct definition, as reported somewhere, should be physical distancing. Populations are “socially” close, citizens are experimenting novel approaches of communication, and novel way to help. Of course, in the era of social networks, everybody is enabled to get in touch, even with people that were missing since lot of time. The velocity of how life goes, the necessity of getting results, the demonstration of own value and the invention of brand-new strategies to overcome the generic “everyday” issues, covering all the fields such as family, job, friends, etc., are facing with a pandemic monster.

Accepted: 2020-04-08 | Published Online: 2020-04-08 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-900 | full text

Substantia Journal

A Providential Last Warning

Vincenzo Balzani, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

In the past few months a dangerous and highly contagious virus, Covid-19, has been circulating on the spaceship Earth. Waiting to fight it with a vaccine, we defend ourselves with the obnoxious weapon of social distancing. According to scientists, the virus passed from wild animals to humans because of one or more of the following mistakes in our relationship with Nature: exaggerated use of resources, environmental degradation, climate change, increasing consumption of animal products, exaggerated anthropization of the soil, loss of biodiversity and the search for wild food by the poorest populations. Viruses are somehow “refugees” of the environmental destruction caused by our aggressiveness. They were fine in the forests and in the bodies of some animals, we gave them the opportunity to multiply.

Accepted: 2020-04-14 | Published Online: 2020-04-15 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-907 | full text

Substantia Journal

Coronavirus and the Heterogenesis of Ends: Underpinning the Ecological and Health Catastrophe is a Political Crisis

Donato Bergandi, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France

The coronavirus catastrophe that we are experiencing is first of all the result of an ecological catastrophe, but its underlying fundamental cause is the political crisis that our democracies are living. The sustainable development model is a smokescreen that will lead not to making deep-going changes to the economic paradigm but to continuing with business as usual. The betrayal of the elites, both political and economic, supported by a system that is no longer democratic, has exposed the population to this type of sanitary problem. A deep transformation of our political system is urgently needed. The people must take part in a true democracy, a direct democracy, that initiates a new democratic revolution capable of countering the sinister interests of the elites, of the caste in power.

Accepted: 2020-04-21 | Published Online: 2020-04-22 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-911 | full text 

Substantia Journal

Even Covid-19 Could Teach Us Something if We Were Good Students!

Luigi Campanella, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

In these dramatic times most of the attention is paid to the statistics of recovered, dead and infected people. But here I would point out another aspect that can make us able to forget even for a very short moment the terrible statistics I mentioned above and open us to hope. While we are closed and locked in our homes nature seems to take a breath. Some days ago, a family of ducks walking around in a desert Florence and looking for something to eat inspired an incredible feeling of tenderness. This was just the latter of a series of images available on the web, at the same time disquieting, romantic and bucolic, that illustrate the amazing transformation of nature and of fauna in the time of this pandemy.

Accepted: 2020-04-22 | Published Online: 2020-04-27 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-917 | full text

Substantia Journal

Considerations for Treating CoronaVirus (Sars-Cov-2) Infection with Passive Immunotherapy

Abraham Karpas*, Douglas Bainbridge, Stephen Ash, Cambridge University Clinical School, United Kingdom

The corona viruses are transient RNA viruses; once an infected individual recovers he or she becomes virus-free and immune. One could expect that in SARS-Covid-19 also, infected individuals who recover will have developed some form of protective immunity. Very little is yet known about its development, when and for how long it might last, and though it is very likely to involve virus-neutralising antibodies, to what extent it might depend on the appearance of such antibodies. However in a recent report 10 very advanced corona patients were treated with a single 200 ml dose of plasma obtained from individuals recovered from the infection. There was impressive clinical improvement.

Accepted: 2020-05-03 | Published Online: 2020-05-04 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-924 | full text

Substantia Journal

From Spillover to Pandemic

David Quammen, American Scientist, USA

This excerpt, published in 2012 in the American edition of the book Spillover, came after 500 pages in which I described the phenomenon of zoonotic diseases (those caused by viruses and other pathogens passed from nonhuman animals to humans), the importance of those diseases amid the problems of global human health, the work of the scientists who study such diseases, and the danger that a virus newly emerged from an animal host could cause a terrible pandemic. Immediately preceding this section, I had recounted my visit with Dr. Robert Webster, one of the world’s leading influenza researchers, who worried that a highly pathogenic form of avian influenza, known as H5N1, might evolve the capacity to transmit human-to-human. “And then God help us,” he said. Another senior authority, as you’ll see below, warned me especially about the coronaviruses. And now here we are.

Accepted: 2020-05-09 | Published Online: 2020-05-11 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-930 | full text

Substantia Journal

Open Science in Times of Coronavirus: Introducing the Concept of Real-Time Publication

Alexandre Hocquet, Université de Lorraine, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Nancy, France

Who doesn’t have an opinion about hydroxychloroquine? The recent developments of the latest research in Marseilles on the potential of this antimalarial drug to reduce the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 have been heating up. Obviously, the current pandemic is a sudden and unprecedented health crisis. Unexpectedness and scale are turning the outbreak into widespread panic: science is summoned to find solutions as soon as possible. In a sense, the worldwide situation is a way of asking how fast can science go. The famed publication from Didier Raoult’s group ² allows us to highlight an evolution in peer review practices, and this trend allows us to question what it means to be “open” in science.

Accepted: 2020-05-21 | Published Online: 2020-05-22 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-937 | full text

Substantia Journal

Stand on the Same Side – Preventing a Second Wave of Covid-19’s Outbreak

Lorenzo Corbetta, University of Florence, Italy

Shiyue Li, Jing Li, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China

Shuliang Guo, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China

Paolo Bonanni, University of Florence, Italy

Felix JF Herth, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Javier Flandes, Univestity Autonoma Madrid, Spain

Mohammed Munavvar, University of Manchester, UK

Li Qiang, Shanghai Oriental Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, China

Na Wang, Shanghai Oriental Hospital Affiliated to Tongji University, China

This document is the direct transcription of a Webinar organized by Prof. L. Corbetta of the University of Florence on April 29th, 2020.

Accepted: 2020-05-22 | Published Online: 2020-05-29 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-950 | full text

Substantia Journal

The Universe, the Light, the Earth, the Life: the Reality is Greater than We Are

Vincenzo Balzani, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

The pandemic caused by Covid-19 locked us at home for several weeks. Some clever town councillors took this opportunity to offer their citizens cultural pills. In my little town I was asked to present a few short lectures on general scientific concepts. I tried to link together four entities of reality (Universe, Light, Earth and Life) showing that reality is much more complex than we think and much greater than us. E.g.: age of the Universe vs age of human civilization (_~1.3×10¹⁰ vs _~ 1×10⁴ years), size of universe vs human size (_~1×10²⁵ m vs _~1 m), velocity of light vs velocity of sound (3×10⁸ vs 3.5×10² m/s), number of stars in the sky (_~ 1×10²³), number of molecule in a drop of water (_~ 3×10²¹), number of atoms in a human body (_~ 1×10²⁷). Although we know reasonably well how Universe, Light, Earth and Life “work”, we are still surrounded by profound mysteries related to the why questions, i.e., the “questions of meaning”, that science cannot answer. Such questions, e.g., why is there the Universe? Why is there Life in this insignificant fragment of the Universe called Earth? Why did the evolution of Life lead to human? What’s the meaning of my life? What is the meaning of the Covid-19 pandemic? The answers to the these “questions of meaning”, that cannot be given by science, are discussed in the enciclic Laudato si’ of pope Francis in relation to the ecological and social crisis we are going through.

Accepted: 2020-06-03 | Published Online: 2020-06-05 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-957 | full text

Substantia Journal

Modeling Social Groups, Policies and Cognitive Behavior in COVID-19 Epidemic Phases. Basic Scenarios

Franco Bagnoli*, Daniele Lorini, Pietro Lió, University of Florence & INFN, Italy

The Covid-19 pandemic is distinct from Spanish flu of 1918 from many aspects among which the contrast between the overabundance of worldwide exchange of information (infomedia) and the actual scarce knowledge of the pathogen and the infection mechanism. Another important distinction is that the epidemics threaten society components, social groups, communities and jobs in very different ways and different death tolls. With this in mind, we start with simple models of pandemics and we drive the reader to more complex models that take into accounts social compartments and communities. The discrete-state models are built by adding elements, first in a mean-field approximation, then adding age classes and differential contact rates, and finally inserting the social group dimension. The novel element we insert is the effect of restrictions in contacts and travels, filtered by the risk perception, according with the growth of the number of infected or recovered people. Assimilating risk perception with cognitive behavior, we obtain several coarse-grain scenarios, that can be used for instance to calibrate the level of restrictions so not to exceed the capacity of the health system, and to speed the post-emergency recovery.

Accepted: 2020-06-05 | Published Online: 2020-06-11 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-914 | full text

Substantia Journal

Stand on the Same Side Against Covid-19 – Diagnostic, Screening Tools and Pathways for Clinical and Preventive Purposes

Lorenzo Corbetta, University of Florence, Italy

Shiyue Li, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China

Jing Li, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China

Gian Maria Rossolini, University of Florence, Italy

Leonardo M. Fabbri, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Wang Guangfa , Peking University First Hospital,  China

Yang Qin Tai, Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yet-sen University, China

This document is the direct transcription of a Webinar organized by Prof. L. Corbetta of the University of Florence on May 19th, 2020.

Accepted: 2020-06-16 | Published Online: 2020-06-20 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-967 | full text

Substantia Journal

The Concept of Organization and the Strategic Position of Chemistry in a Generic Research and Development Project Focused on SARS-CoV-2

Luigi Campanella*, Maurizio Anastasio, Department of Chemistry, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

The tragic events relating to the spread and pathologies caused by SARS-CoV-2 have prompted the authors, whose work interests have always been academic and industrial scientific research, to provide their experiential contribution by planning a generic applied research project. This is focused on the synergy between the management organization of a research team and the strategic position Chemistry must occupy among other scientific disciplines for the same technological-scientific project.

Accepted: 2020-06-26 | Published Online: 2020-06-29| DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-941 | full text

Substantia Journal

Distance Education in Chemistry during the Epidemic Covid-19

Valentina Domenici, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

During the epidemic Covid-19, in most of the countries schools of all grades and universities had to face a long period of closure without interrupting the educational mission. Distance education, which has been introduced first in UK in the Nineteen century as “correspondence learning” and then in USA and Australia, with the institution of “Open Universities” (i.e. MOOC and e-learning platforms), became the only way to guarantee the continuity in teaching during the pandemic Covid-19. The present contribution is a short overview of the literature about limits and advantages of distance education of chemistry, in particular at high school and university levels, with a focus on the experiences and peculiarities of the distance education in the period of the Covid-19 emergency.

Accepted: 2020-06-18 | Published Online: 2020-06-25 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-961 | full text

Substantia Journal

Stand on the Same Side Against Covid – 19 Clinical Management of Covid-19

Lorenzo Corbetta, University of Florence, Italy

Leonardo M. Fabbri, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Shiyue Li, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China

Jing Li, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, China

Bin Cao, China-Japan Friendship Hospital

Jin Yang, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

Giancarlo Agnelli, University of Perugia, Italy

Michela Giustozzi, University of Perugia, Italy

Alberto Mantovani, Humanitas University, Milan, Italy

Luigi Camporota, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

Semra Bilaçeroğlu, Pulmonary Department at Izmir Dr. Suat Seren Training & Research Hospital for Thoracic Medicine & Surgery, Turkey

Adrian Rendon, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico

This document is the direct transcription of a Webinar organized by Prof. L. Corbetta of the University of Florence on May 29th, 2020.

Accepted: 2020-07-20 | Published Online: 2020-07-20 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-1022 | full text

Substantia Journal

Stand on the Same Side Against Covid – 19, the Future Strategies Against an Unknown Enemy

Lorenzo Corbetta*, Leonardo M. Fabbri, Duccio Cavalieri, Paolo Bonanni, Mohammed Munavvar, Alvaro Cruz, Adrian Rendon, Laura De Paoli

Associate Professor of Respiratory Diseases – University of Florence Scientific and Website Director of the European Association for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (EABIP)

Accepted: 2020-09-04 | Published Online: 2020-09-07 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-1059

This document is the direct transcription of a Webinar organized by Prof. L. Corbetta of the University of Florence on July 7th, 2020.

Accepted: 2020-09-07 | Published Online: 2020-09-07 | DOI: 10.13128/Substantia-1059 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Dalla crisi pandemica il ritorno ai territori

Antonella Tarpino, Historian and essayist, Nuto Revelli Foundation, Italy

Anna Marson University Venice, Department of Architecture and Arts, Italy

Nel contesto di una pandemia che ha stravolto le vite di molte persone, comunità e famiglie, restringendo in breve tempo lo spazio teoricamente praticabile del mondo allo spazio obbligato della casa, sono state molte le ‘archistar’, in discontinuità con i loro  progetti,  a  invitare  repentinamente  e  con  una  certa  qual  leggerezza  a  lasciare  la  città  per  i  piccoli  borghi  e  le  aree  interne.  Rispetto  a  questo  coro  i  testi  di  que-sto numero off rono una serie di approfondimenti, basati su materiali documentali e interpretativi,  che  evidenziano  invece  la  necessità  di  ripensare  complessivamente  il  modello di produzione dello spazio urbano e rurale.

Accepted: 2020-12-10 | Published Online: 2020-12-10 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12369 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Sorveglianza globale e metropoli pandemica. Attualità e genealogia di un disastro

Ottavio Marzocca, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Department of Humanities, Bari, Italy

The SARS-COV2 pandemic has shown that entrusting global communications systems with public health protection can produce disastrous results. In fact, the strategies of planetary surveillance, promoted by the World Health Organization for the prevention of EIDs that have long been the greatest danger of pandemic infections, are oriented in this sense. These strategies are based, on the one hand, on the problematic willingness of nation-states to promptly communicate information on the risks of epidemics and, on the other hand, on the algorithmic processing of large masses of disparate data derived from web users behaviours. The growth of urban concentrations – the subject of anti-epidemic biopolitics since the beginnings of modernity and today recognized as a determining factor of the ecosystem alterations that cause pandemic dangers – in this scenario risks becoming a tendency to resign oneself to, waiting for the next contagion. The territorialist approach can offer alternative perspectives to this both by promoting and applying the idea of ​​ urban bioregion and by taking into account that there are already those who plan to transfer most of the ‘dangerous liaisons’ that take place in the postmodern metropolis online.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-04 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12288 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Se il pianeta è malato lo saremo anche noi: crisi climatica, ambientale e sanitaria

Luca Mercalli, Società Meteorologica Italiana and ISPRA, Italy

It is widely known that all environmental alterations have an interconnected role which, sooner or later, directly or indirectly affects the health of humanity. However, the fundamental inactivity of politics and economy in countering this drift makes things worse, with the growing risk of triggering brutal and irreversible changes in the Earth-system. Ironically, the global health emergency has shown that rapid and radical choices can generate immediate positive effects in environmental terms: think of the drastic reduction in climate-altering emissions caused by the lockdown. Thus, such forced response indicates, perhaps, the way to more reflective strategies able to teach us (again) to live in harmony with nature.

Accepted: 2020-10-17 | Published Online: 2020-10-18 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12137 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Mappe dei contagi e condizioni eco-territoriali

Sergio Malcevschi*, Riccardo Santolini, Gianmarco Paris, Paola Pluchino, Italy

The article presents the maps and data at the provincial level of COVID infections in Italy in the first phase of the epidemic (March-May 2020). The bio-geography of infections in Italy was very articulated, with a spatial imprint that was maintained in the months considered despite significant variations in the total number of infections within the period considered. In addition to a North-South macro-gradient, infra- and supra-regional territorial areas with specific characteristics have been produced. The situations less affected by the infections occurred in areas without significant metropolitan components, characterized by a more balanced relationship from an ecological and landscape point of view. Some implications for better management of future epidemic risks are discussed. The so-called ‘green deal’ development models, in addition to the new contents for economic productions, need to have greater awareness of the bio-physical risks associated with an inadequate government of the territory: it will be necessary that they concretely assign a relevant role to multi-scalars networks of ecosystems and landscapes and the resilience services they offer.

Accepted: 2020-12-03 | Published Online: 2020-12-04 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12290 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Piccoli paesi nell’ondata del virus. Resistenza, democrazia, comunità

Pietro Clemente, SIMBDEA, The Italian Society for Museum and Heritage Anthropology, Italy

As part of the reflections on how Covid-19 has acted in Italian disadvantaged non-urban areas we ask if the lockdown has enhanced – through comparisons with cities – the demand for a higher quality of life; we also try to understand what kind of new subjectivity can strenghten the scene of small villages engaged in this rebirth and which conflicts or growth process regarding new communitarian forms are developing. After a review of the new forms of contemporary community and the identification of the frequent element of conflict for the new undertakings of “Riabitare l’Italia”, we analyse evidence of quality of life in places with lower social density, but also extreme loneliness and heightened sense of abandonment due to the lack of post Covid strong investment policies for marginal areas. The final reflection takes note of the fact that the current debates tend to not see a connection between the social and economic aspects and the symbolic and ritualistic aspects of the social life in small villages, and that points to the need for a recomposition of different aspects of life in terms of analysis and project.

Accepted: 2020-12-03 | Published Online: 2020-12-05 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12331 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Epidemie e coscienza sociale nel lungo periodo

Lucia Carle, EHESS, Paris, France

Since antiquity, humanity has been facing epidemics, one of the great recurring fears in the society of the Ancient Régime. In the long run they have generated or accelerated new collective behaviours, as well as the repetition and perpetuation of ancient reactions and behaviours. The fundamental measures – distancing, isolation, hygiene – generated by the confrontation and coexistence with the disease, are the corpus of long-lasting collective behaviours, handed down and dusted off with each epidemic/pandemic resurgence. Long-term epidemics affect territories, contributing to the definition of their peculiarities. Once imported, they assume precise and different features peculiar to each area, creating short duration spatial and social boundaries. They leave marks in social collective consciousness, modifying during their incidence the related, circumscribed and enlarged horizons defined by anthropic components. Every pandemic crisis affects social collective consciousness. In populations there is always both a rejection of the disease, although evident, up to its denial, and the insistent desire to ‘behave as before’. This is one of the major issues political and health authorities face, today as in the past, fighting against the infection spread and attempting to overcome it. The epidemic accelerates ongoing or underlying processes, influencing collective evolutions and changes. In a long-term perspective, epidemics are ‘bottlenecks’ that have forced societies to concretely deal with the consequences of their fundamental deficiencies.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-06 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12332 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Ritorni al Sud nel tempo del Covid

Vito Teti, University of Calabria, Department of Humanities, Italy

Disasters are accelerators of historical and social processes already underway, and the Covid-19 pandemic is a health and social disaster of planetary scale and historical significance. Since the first days of this emergency there has been a return to birthplaces: from the North to the South of Italy, but also from the urban centres to the villages, from the coast to the inland, from the plain to the mountains. The numbers are still small to speak of a reversal of the trend compared to the decade-long depopulation of certain areas, but something is happening and requires us to reflect on the kind of rebirth that lies ahead for the villages, the margins, the suburbs.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-06 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12334 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Dal ciglio della rupe tarpea, resilienze nell’area milanese/lombarda

Giorgio Ferraresi*, Vittorio Pozzati, Vincenzo Vasciaveo, Polytechnic University of Milan, Department of Architecture and urban studies, Italy

This article tries to grasp the ‘essential meaning’ of the pandemic and its context to introduce an alternative outcome based on practices already living, here and now, among local actors. From the break of co-evolutionary process between nature and culture to territorial regeneration as a design rule; from the tragic dominance of death to the vision of desired worlds of life. Resilience as resistance and proposal. Multiple experiences are gathered here, focusing the theme of neo-rurality and the co-production/consumption relationship, also in its nascent and growing connection with the Food Policy of the Milan Municipality and with civil volunteering. Right in the heart of the pandemic, which does not destroy but sees these practices grow and strengthen towards the future. They concern: small/medium-sized businesses and their more complex solidarity networks; the new role of some cooperatives, ‘hubs’ at the very centre of local agricultural realities in extended interaction. Field experiences that reveal all their fertility in a dialogue among theory, cultures and social practices destined to change the current common sense.

Accepted: 2020-12-02 | Published Online: 2020-12-03 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12284 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Segnali di resilienza rispetto al Covid. I casi di Ostana e di Gandino

Sergio De La Pierre, Independent sociologist, Milan, Italy

How did two municipalities in mountain areas, different from each other but similar for having since several years many civic associations, react to Covid? We ask this to many privileged witnesses. Ostana is a small virtuous municipality in Piedmont Alps, famous for its successful re-population projects, which experienced directly no Covid case so far, but has been able to take advantage from pandemic designing a new local development scenario. It has namely set up a community cooperative with projects aimed at sociality, tourism, place promotion, culture, neo-agriculture. Gandino, a municipality located in the Bergamasco area most severely hit by Covid, has counted hundreds of dead. Here resistance and solidarity by most people has been extraordinary, bringing many population components to imagine a different future for the after crisis. Resilience signals that in both situations meet the criterion of multisectoral local development, which is a fundamental key to community resilience.

Accepted: 2020-12-02 | Published Online: 2020-12-03 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12335 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Emergenze di futuro: verso nuovi modi di abitare la terra. Il ripopolamento degli stazzi nei territori della Gallura

Lidia Decandia, University of Sassari, Department of Architecture, design and urban planning, Italy

The essay is inspired by studies on the late-ancient period. A period also strongly affected by a cycle of pandemics, to whose emergence seems to have significantly contributed the structure of the urbanization model of the Roman city-world. Historians who analyzed in such key this era, in many respects similar to ours, in paying attention to the minute signs of change, have revealed how this period was not only a moment of decline but also a period of extraordinary cultural and spiritual vitality from which the medieval civilization originated. Using these same lenses, attentive to clues and minimal stories, the essay tries to look at some repopulation phenomena underway for some years in the countryside of Gallura, a historical region located in the north-east of Sardinia, today accelerated by the appearance of Covid pandemic. This through the analysis of some of the many interviews carried out during a field research, highlighting how in the folds of this territory a swarm of new inhabitants, often coming from the continental metropolises, are trying, in forms still to be understood and interpreted, to build new ways of inhabiting the earth aimed, as well as at reopening new vital relationships with nature, at building other ways of being together.

Accepted: 2020-12-05 | Published Online: 2020-12-06 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12336 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Il confinamento domiciliare nel post-sisma dell’Appennino centrale

Claudia Della Valle, Enrico Mariani, “Carlo Bo” University of Urbino, Department of Communication sciences, humanities and international studies, Italy

The recent Coronavirus pandemic that has affected territories all over the world and, in particular, the following Italian regulatory provisions, have stimulated a broad interdisciplinary reflection on the theme of housing. This contribution analyses the relationship between the prolonged confinement and housing practices within two post-disaster emergency housing areas, assigned for those who lost their homes in the 2016-2017 central Apennine earthquake. Through a research design that contemplates the comparison of the most different study cases, and through the use of qualitative methods, in particular the ethnographic ones, some aspects are highlighted: on the one hand, some critical issues related to post-earthquake temporary living, which, during the period of home confinement, have contributed to exacerbating vulnerabilities; on the other, the emergence of new and unprecedented social and housing configurations, which recall resilient processes already activated following the disaster.

Accepted: 2020-12-05 | Published Online: 2020-12-06 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12338 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Il lavoro del virus e il virus del lavoro nelle mappe di territorio

Marco Revelli, University of Eastern Piedmont, Department of Law, Italy

The territorial analysis of the spread of Covid-19, detailed at the municipality and district level, is a necessary tool for understanding the morphology of the contagion and fighting it. It reveals its ‘classist’ character, which has affected the most poorer urban areas, but also as at the challenge of the virus the ‘network capitalism’ has revealed its structural ‘frailty’. Almost all long networks have thus crashed, as the borders closed, while the district economy has seen its virtue – the relationship of proximity, relational intensity, pushed interaction – transformed into vice and deadly threat: the ‘red’ areas, in which contagion and lethality are concentrated, correspond almost palmarily with those where productive and commercial interactivity was more fibrillating. The virus did not walk only on the silk road, in Italy it also retraced the provincial networks of production interchange, the salmon ascent along the valleys that had characterized the transition to post-Fordism, saw the clusters of warehouses become hubs of the contagion (the story of Bergamo is exemplary). The intertwining between the fibrillating intensity of doing and the frailty of the productive structure was lethal for areas such as the central Padania: between the fever of doing and the fever of the virus there is a tragic interaction where it is not the ‘Rhenish capitalism’ that dominates but the very intense and very frail Italian one.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-05 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12323 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Il territorio come costruzione sociale al tempo del Covid

Aldo Bonomi, AASTER, Milan, Italy

To deal about territory as a social construction in Covid times we need to start again from community, albeit eradicated from physical proximity. The social dimension of the community does not pertain only to experts and prefects. The word ‘care’, beyond sanitary domain, urges a job that starts from feelings, anthropologies, operating on the thousand uncertainties that characterize our society rich in means and poor in collective ends. Care as a path and opportunity to rethink our being a community of destiny, starting from territories of the margin dense of practices and experiences between environmental sustainability and social inclusion, to take to the centre for more habitable cities. To this end, it is necessary that social innovation tries to escape from the technological allure or ritualism of technical design focused upon innovation of means, promoting instead innovation of social ends and production of collective meaning. We need to consider social innovation practices not only as good news, but also as a collective intellect of new intermediate bodies, that is, filaments of new institutionality. There can be no green economy without green society, a collective intellect rooted into territories to create and restore social cohesion. In terms of governance, it would seem logical to weave regional columns to dialogue with the state pediment that holds and coordinates everything, and then go to Europe and the world to come… given the state of debate, an utopia.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-05 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12324 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

I rischi della specializzazione mono-funzionale turistica dei sistemi montani rive-lati dal Covid-19

Alberto Di Gioia*, Giuseppe Dematteis, Polytechnic University of Turin, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, Italy

This research paper aims to verify the thesis according to which the local mono-functional economies such as those based on winter mass tourism are not sustainable, nor advantageous from an economic and social point of view. The analysis is based on the surveys conducted by Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) in the spring 2020 lockdown period, relating to the loss of revenue in the Italian municipalities. In the Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta these losses are related to the tourist specialization (based on the number of tourists) and to the local endowment of services. In the mountain area of these two regions the average loss of service companies in the 46 tourist specialized municipalities was four times more than the average of all 536 mountain municipalities.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-05 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12325 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Pensare un’economia trasformativa per comunità sostenibili e solidali

Riccardo Troisi, ReOrient ONG, Italy

Pandemic has underlined as never before the limits of the prevailing economic model, and the evidence about the fact that our life styles are increasingly assaulted by multiple (financial, economic, ecologic and about social justice) lasting and overlapping crisis. The ‘solidarity society’ is showing, along this crisis, an important response capacity, practising multiple generative experiences of new economy whose common frame is a pact of care for its own living space, fair with both human community and natural environment. The serious consequences of the ongoing pandemic, the end of which is difficult to predict, will bring just a return to the previous situation or an activation of the large and diffuse social innovation potentialities? So far, we have no clear signal towards one or the other. In any case, we can develop alternative action and strategies based on potentialities. Starting from the local level there is the possibility to experiment not just residual or testimonial projects but alternative models of production, distribution, consumption and savings bringing back the concept of economy to its primary dimension, the one to satisfy fundament needs of the community. If we do not reclaim this dimension, we will not be able to answer the issues of equity and justice, both social and environmental, which are everyday becoming more urgent and essential at the global level.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-05 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12329 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Verso le comunità energetiche

Monica Bolognesi, Alberto Magnaghi, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

Moving from the critique of the deterritorialisation process that led to the concentration of services and activities in metropolitan areas and the consequent desertification of peripheral and marginal territories, the paper reflects on the implications of the traditional centralized model of energy production and on its criticalities amplified by the ongoing pandemic, then analyzing the opportunities of an energy transition characterized by return to territory. The creation of energy communities represents an opportunity to overcome the social acceptance paradigm and the traditional sectoral approach to experiment with a model of territorial energy patrimonialisation, through the integration of specific locally defined energy mixes, calibrated on the resources’ availability and reproducibility and respectful of the bioregion assets. Dynamic energy communities in which the inhabitants participate, interpret, co-plan, are involved in the identification of local resources and take an active role as protagonists in the definition and management of the transition process of their territories towards a self-sustainability prospect.

Accepted: 2020-12-04 | Published Online: 2020-12-05 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12330 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Il virus architetto

Aimaro Isola, Isolarchitetti, Turin, Italy

Once confined Art and Architecture, which for a long time did guide us, in the autonomous spaces of aesthetics, critique, the market, disputes among connoisseurs, the advent of the virus seems now to induce unpredictable changes even in thinking new places for living. But a quick look at the contemporary world astride the virus, flying like the Baron of Münchhausen on a cannonball, reveals that the virus has already been here, that crises, catastrophes, plagues and wars have always oriented the production of human landscape; and presses us on reconnecting the broken ‘threads’ of an interweaved design, on being not only subjects ‘in’ the nature but, ‘with’ the nature, inhabitants of a common atmosphere, of a single landscape.

Accepted: 2020-10-04 | Published Online: 2020-10-07 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12097 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Il futuro è già qui

Guido Viale, Independent economist and author

Despite the authoritative warnings (from IPCC to COP 21, from Pope Francis to Greta Thunberg) climate crisis is reaching irreversibility. Besides essential mitigation measures (stopping as soon as possible extraction and use of fossils, useless and harmful Major Projects, relocations to save on environmental and labour costs, and analogous) adaptation measures must be put in place as soon as possible to face life conditions becoming more and more difficult. International institutions and governments have not been up to the task, therefore local communities must lead the turn, recreating inside themselves and in their mutual relations conditions that promote a wider autonomy both in managing their own territories and in the production field through the reterritorialisation of many activities now spread throughout the planet. Efficiency and energy generation from local and differentiated renewable sources; ecological, proximity and multifunctional agriculture and farming for a healthy and sustainable diet; ecodesign finalized to zero waste; drastic reduction of mobility based on private motorization and care of hydrogeological systems. These are the core intervention fields for the unavoidable ecological conversion: a process requiring a strong popular participation, but also an inevitable conflict with the established powers.

Accepted: 2020-12-05 | Published Online: 2020-12-07 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12342 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

I territori fragili di fronte al Covid

Alessandro Balducci, Polytechnic University of Milan, Department of Architecture and urban studies, Italy

Moving from the convergence between the concept of “terrestrial” elaborated by Bruno Latour and the positions of Italian territorialism, the paper considers what the impact of Covid on fragile territories in Italy has been, but also what opportunities are opening up from the crisis that the pandemic has produced. Three areas are considered: urban peripheries, territories in between, inland, mountainous and hilly areas in contraction. The pandemic has hit each of these areas particularly hard. The lesson we can learn, however, is that to avoid further catastrophes, it is exactly from these places that we must start to build a resilient, habitable and equitable territory.

Accepted: 2020-12-06 | Published Online: 2020-12-08 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12352 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Politiche urbane e pratiche solidali. Il panorama internazionale e un caso di studio

Ilaria Agostini*, Maria Rita Gisotti, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Department of Cultural heritage, Italy

The crisis triggered by Covid-19 has accelerated a process of rethinking of contemporary living forms, already underway for some time, started in recent years especially by the fight against climate change and by the movements for the ‘right to the city’. This contribution proposes a reflection on two levels: that of medium and long-term international urban policies, and that of solidarity practices experimented in the city of Florence, taken as a case study. The article therefore offers a critical summary of some international policy documents dedicated to the response of cities to Covid-19. In the part dedicated to the case study, it describes the emergence of self-organized solidarity networks created in response to the immediate needs of the inhabitants, excluded from institutional emergency measures. In conclusion, it is highlighted how the indications of European policies point towards a more inclusive, sustainable and digital city and towards a different model of tourist use. At the same time, it can be observed that convincing hypotheses for a territorial restart of strong political value come from the realities active in solidarity mutualism. At the basis of these visions lie, in our opinion, a renewed centrality of public policies and collective space, an ability for interinstitutional and cooperative dialogue with the various social components, an attention to the bioregional scale for an effective ecological transition.

Accepted: 2020-11-28 | Published Online: 2020-11-29 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12271 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Housing collaborativo e prospettive creative: scenari per la città a venire

Lorenza Perini

University of Padua, Department of Political science, law and international studies, Italy

The new and uncertain times into which the Covid pandemic has thrown us make it clear that we need to rethink the way we live in the city, in our neighborhood, and even in the interior spaces of our homes. How this change should take place is not entirely clear, nor should we expect a standard recipe. Certainly, the direction to follow is that of an increasing sustainability – in all the meanings that this word can assume – environmental, economic, social sustainability. Not necessarily this direction points straight out of the city and into the countryside villages, as many of the current speeches seem to support. In this paper, we want to talk about different and creative ideas for a sustainable and socialized living, in the direction of a sharing of services and functions, using also an historical perspective for setting up scenarios and contexts of possible practices.

Accepted: 2020-12-07 | Published Online: 2020-12-08 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12354 | full text

Scienze del Territorio Journal

Un Faro per il patrimonio culturale nel post-Covid-19

Giuliano Volpe

“Aldo Moro” University of Bari, Department of Humanities, Italy

The current epidemiological situation requires an acceleration of the reform process, based on the rethinking of the forms of protection and public enjoyment of cultural heritage, by fostering the development of widespread ‘social protection’ practices, the active participation of citizens, and bottom-up management systems. In this respect, guide-lines are provided by the Faro Convention as well as by the Italian Constitution and case studies from various Italian regions will be presented.

Accepted: 2020-12-07 | Published Online: 2020-12-09 | DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12355 | full text

RIEF Journal 

Il dopo delle famiglie: disagi, quasi certezze e speranze

Michele Corsi, University of Macerata, Italy

L’articolo si compone di tre paragrafi, con riferimento alle famiglie dopo questa pandemia da coronavirus. Un dopo che è anche un durante. Perché non sappiamo nemmeno quanto durerà. E, cioè, i disagi, le quasi certezze e le speranze. Partendo da un assunto: ci pare davvero che le reali situazioni familiari siano pressoché sconosciute a chi ci governa. Nondimeno con un romanticismo che ci sembra inopportuno e fuori luogo.
I disagi: un eccesso di competenze che di fatto non si posseggono a fronte di un virus per lo più sconosciuto; le decisioni dello Stato e le maggiori situazioni di povertà, non soltanto economiche, nel nostro Paese; la distanza del potere nei riguardi del popolo; e la didattica a distanza per il suo interfacciarsi con le reali possibilità delle famiglie italiane.
Le quasi certezze: un aumento di separazioni e divorzi nel prossimo futuro e il peggioramento di dinamiche familiari già compromesse.
Le speranze: che lo Stato, la Chiesa e anche la pedagogia lavorino maggiormente e più proficuamente in futuro a favore delle culture della stabilità e del progetto. Delle famiglie come delle persone. Passando per i giovani e gli attuali adulti.

Accepted: 2020-05-6 | Published Online: 2020-05-13 | DOI: 10.13128/rief-8610 | full text

RIEF Journal 

Essere genitori ai tempi del COVID19: disagi, bisogni, risorse: i primi dati di una rilevazione

Alessandra Gigli, Department of Education Studies, University of Bologna, Italy

Il contributo presenta una prima analisi dei dati risultanti da una rilevazione che ha coinvolto circa 800 genitori nella compilazione di un questionario finalizzato a comprendere l ‘impatto dell’emergenza Covid19 nelle famiglie italiane. La rilevazione, partita il 31 marzo 2020 (quindi dopo circa due settimane dell’attivazione del lockdown) è ancora aperta e tale rimarrà almeno fino alla fine dell’emergenza. Il questionario, riservato solo a genitori, contiene 27 domande a risposta chiusa e 2 domande a risposa aperta, suddivise in tre sessioni: la prima dedicata ai dati anagrafici, condizioni abitative e lavorative, alla composizione del nucleo familiare e alle caratteristiche del gruppo di soggetti conviventi nel periodo del lockdown; la seconda dedicata ad indagare le relazioni di coppia (riservata solo a chi trascorre questo periodo in coabitazione con il/la partner; la terza intitolata “Tra le mura domestiche: come l’emergenza sanitaria ha cambiato la quotidianità in famiglia” è focalizzata sulla descrizione da parte dei genitori delle nuove abitudini, dei vissuti, dei bisogni, delle risorse, e del clima emotivo nel nucleo convivente. I dati, qui presentati in tremini generali, saranno in seguito saranno analizzati con strumenti statistici e presentati in un report più completo. L’obiettivo di questo contributo é contribuire oggi, ad emergenza ancora attiva, ad una maggiore comprensione del fenomeno in atto con l’auspicio che possa essere stimolo e base per ulteriori indagini, riflessioni e approfondimenti.

Accepted: 2020-05-8 | Published Online: 2020-05-13 | DOI: 10.13128/rief-8572 | full text

RIEF Journal 

DAD e LEAD: nuove forme di partenariato tra sistema educativo-formativo e famiglie

Grazia Romanazzi, University of Macerata, Italy

In emergenza pandemica da Coronavirus, l’umanità intera è stata chiamata a raccolta affinché ognuno assumesse l’impegno di dare il proprio prezioso contributo al contenimento del contagio per tutelare la salute di tutti. Il tributo pagato da ciascuno è stato elevatissimo in termini economici, sociali e relazionali. Molti hanno pagato con la propria vita. In campo educativo, i LEAD (Legami Educativi A Distanza) e la DAD (Didattica A Distanza) hanno tentato di “ridurre il danno e l’impatto” del distanziamento sociale a carico degli alunni, rispettivamente degli asili nido e della scuola dell’infanzia, i primi; della scuola primaria e secondaria, la seconda. I limiti oggettivi dettati dalla carenza e/o inadeguatezza dei mezzi, degli strumenti e dei materiali a disposizione in casa, o altrimenti reperibili, in tempo di lockdown hanno rappresentato inconfutabili criticità per gli alunni e le loro famiglie, tanto quanto per gli insegnanti. Questi ultimi sono stati, sovente, soggetti ad accuse di pretenziosità sproporzionata rispetto alle reali possibilità contingenti di ciascun allievo. Le famiglie, dal canto loro, hanno dovuto confrontarsi con una “prossimità” abitativa, emotiva e relazionale tra i vari componenti, a cui i tempi lavorativi le avevano disabituate. Il presente contributo intende superare le accuse e le forme di reciproco ostracismo tra sistemi educativo-formativi e famiglie per sottolineare, di contro, l’imprescindibilità di forme inedite di partenariato. Solo la collaborazione tra gli agenti sociali consente di oltrepassare l’isolamento e l’individualismo in favore di una comunità educante alla resilienza, al processo e al divenire, più che al risultato.

Accepted: 2020-07-8 | Published Online: 2020-07-15 | DOI: 10.13128/rief-8990 | full text

RIEF Journal 

Il ruolo del sapere implicito nella gestione della relazione. Per una epistemologia della professionalità educativa

Francesco Lo Presti, University of Naples “Parthenope”, Italy

Educare vuol dire realizzare un’impresa che pone al contempo diversi livelli di complessità e di problematicità. Evidentemente, le competenze e la professionalità di un educatore che opera nella complessità socioculturale contemporanea devono avere caratteristiche di una specializzazione da consentire, in qualche modo, di mettere l’emergenza “a sistema”, non essendo essa un evento occasionale da gestire, ma una condizione del contesto di lavoro. A partire da queste premesse, il contributo intende mettere in luce la centralità che la formazione professionale degli educatori assume nella costruzione di competenze trasversali, nella proposta di una prospettiva fenomenologica dell’educazione, concentrata cioè sul valore soggettivo dell’esperienza e del fare significato.

Accepted: 2020-09-28 | Published Online: 2020-11-03 | DOI: 10.13128/rief-9547 | full text

RIEF Journal 

L’educatore come promotore di forze relazionali e comunicative: saperi, motivazioni e microabilità per una proposta formativa pedagogicamente orientata

Marco Ius, University of Padua, Italy

Il contributo si prefigge di riflettere sulla relazione e sulla comunicazione in educazione. La prima parte presenta una breve cornice teorica pedagogica sul tema della comunicazione all’interno della relazione educativa e sottolinea il ruolo dell’empatia. Segue una discussione sul ruolo dell’educatore per focalizzarsi sulla relazione d’aiuto al fine di esplorare le questioni relative alla gestione delle dinamiche comunicative e relazionali. Discutendo sull’etimologia e sull’utilizzo della parola dinamiche, viene proposta una riflessione sul concetto di forza e sulla comunicazione come l’incontro tra due forze. La terza parte introduce l’elemento delle competenze comunicazione, e in base a quanto presentato prima, illustra e riflette su alcune microabilità di counseling che sono state oggetto dei percorsi didattici nei corsi di laurea per educatori. Le conclusioni evidenziano possibili sviluppi e attenzioni da integrare nel progettare moduli formativi sulle abilità di relazione e comunicazione all’interno della didattica universitaria per gli educatori.

Accepted: 2020-09-28 | Published Online: 2020-11-05 | DOI: 10.13128/rief-9477 | full text

RIEF Journal 

La relazione educativa nella ricerca e nella formazione dei professionisti dell’educazione e della formazione

Rossana Adele Rossi, University of Calabria, Italy

Il contributo è focalizzato sugli obiettivi formativi dei corsi di laurea L19 che il professionista dell’educazione e della formazione deve acquisire in particolare in termini di conoscenze e competenze relazionali e comunicative in funzione dei risultati di apprendimento. Un secondo oggetto è costituito dalla ricostruzione storico pedagogica su cui si innestano le attuali concezioni del rapporto educativo e dei fondamenti epistemologici delle conoscenze e competenze relazionali e comunicative in funzione della formazione dei formatori. I momenti più significativi della fondazione pedagogica del rapporto educatore allievo e di una riflessione pedagogica legata strettamente alla riflessività filosofica si pongono come elementi centrali del core curriculum della L19. A questo proposito i nodi teoretici fondamentali sono gli studi che hanno evidenziato il carattere ideologico dell’educazione e quello conformativo della relazione educatore allievo. Gli studi menzionati, letti anche attraverso le trasformazioni della pedagogia da sapere unitario a sapere al plurale, ci permettono di evidenziare, in un terzo momento, la tensione verso l’esigenza del rapporto tra le scienze pedagogiche e le altre scienze, anche quelle a carattere empirico sperimentale. La relazione educativa infatti è uno dei temi di snodo di ricerche molteplici su saperi e non solo di quelli umanistici ma anche e soprattutto di quelli scientifici. E’ in questo scenario che il contributo cerca di fare affiorare il senso della relazione educativa nella direzione della formazione di un soggetto che vive in un’epoca caratterizzata dalla rarefazione dei rapporti umani e dalla forte affermazione delle tecnologie.

Accepted: 2020-09-28 | Published Online: 2020-11-07 | DOI: 10.13128/rief-9521 | full text

Ri-Vista Journal 

Cities after COVID-19: how trees and green infrastructures can help shaping a sustainable future

Francesco Ferrini, Antonella Gori

University of Florence, Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry

There is no doubt that metropolitan areas are, and will increasingly be, the engines of economic growth and fertile grounds for the development of technology, creativity and innovation and this will need a shift in the future cities planning and management especially regarding the increase in green areas. This must be done through a regeneration process that can only refer to the 17 objectives of sustainable development (UN, 2019) that are frequently neglected in regeneration programs and this is likely to result in unsustainable urban renewal in many cities. Three main challenges for sustainable urban regeneration can be identified: – environmental (climate change, carbon emissions and use of resources), – social (inequality, cohesion and health), – institutional (governance). We need to promote the start of a real “green revolution”, a revolution that, through the increase in plant cover, will make our cities a better place, doing it with an inclusive approach. The “green” city cannot therefore remain only a set of abstract, portable, stereotyped ideas because it must be the place that will constitute the territory of activity of our life.

Accepted: 2020-05 | Published Online: 2020-05-13 | DOI: 10.13128/rv-8553 | full text

Ri-Vista Journal 

Segregazione. Roma ai tempi della pandemia

Franco Zagari, Architettura e paesaggio, Rome, Italy

At the beginning of the first restrictions imposed by coronavirus, on March 13th Franco Zagari published on Facebook a first reflection on the psychophysical condition modified by the cloister, especially on the skin and through the senses. Almost like in a fantasy story, the place of the forced domicile turns into a sort of submarine, well isolated but where a singular adaptability between container and guests is established: the house capable of adapting to people’s breath, but at the same time of opening to the breath of a city’s that appears unknown, even if too familiar.

Asked to accept these reflections in this extraordinary issue of RI-VISTA, and to extend this thinking towards the public space, Zagari reverses and radicalises the reasoning. As the nearly inventor of this phrase, he seems to reject it to project his gaze beyond, as usual, to compose a horizon of future objects of the project, in which he brings to synthesis many extremely current and sensitive themes, to redesign a country that is reborn with exante care, done through all the forms of the project. (Fabio Di Carlo).

Accepted: 2020-05 | Published Online: 2020-05-13 | DOI: 10.13128/rv-8474 | full text

Ri-Vista Journal

Altri, altrove, altrimenti

Annalisa Metta, Università Roma Tre, Dipartimento di Architettura, Rome, Italy

Once the most intense and dramatic phase of the Coronavirus infection is over, observing some of its effects on urban open spaces could be useful for the progress of design, even beyond the emergency. Above all, two central questions arise. The first: once the absence of humans from public space has revealed the presence of other living beings, both plants and animals, it may now be possible and even desirable to establish renewed conditions of coexistence with them, according with the most advanced positions of contemporary thought on the need to overcome the oppositional dualism between nature and nurture, nature and the city. The second question is about where and how the attractive, central and socially cohesive spaces of the near future will be, once that, having been deprived of traditional public spaces, we have experienced the silent quality of many areas of urban amnesia, outside the orthodoxy of the usual codes of behavior and therefore willing to accept inventive uses, practices, and rituals.

Accepted: 2020-07 | Published Online: 2020-07-23 | DOI: 10.13128/rv-9026 | full text

Ri-Vista Journal

Il paesaggio del turismo oltre il COVID-19: prospettive per una Firenze resiliente

Elena Tarsi¹, Massimo Carta²

¹ Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal ² DIDA, Università di Firenze, Italy

Le misure anti-contagio legate all’emergenza sanitaria da COVID-19 decise da molti governi nazionali, hanno avuto un impatto devastante sull’industria del turismo, mettendo in luce con estrema chiarezza la fragilità di un sistema che, pur producendo enormi profitti, trasforma profondamente i luoghi interessati, la percezione che ne hanno abitanti e visitatori e la loro capacità di resilienza. Il contributo riflette sul caso di Firenze e sulla progressiva specializzazione turistica del suo centro storico, presentando un bilancio delle politiche adottate fino ad oggi e avanzando alcune prospettive per una rinnovata strategia che vada oltre il post-COVID-19. L’inedito paesaggio di un centro deserto, sperimentato alla fine del lockdown, è lo specchio di un vuoto di senso, di una cesura nella relazione tra tessuti urbani e corpo sociale della città, determinatosi negli anni della specializzazione verso un turismo di massa. La strategia proposta è quella di investire in un sistema più resiliente che abbia nella rinnovata residenzialità un fattore di riequilibrio e nella rinforzata relazione tra città metropolitana e centro storico una leva di azione per una nuova mixité funzionale, economica e sociale.

Accepted: 2020-11 | Published Online: 2020-11-9 | DOI: 10.13128/rv-9742 | full text

Media Education Journal

Media and education in the pandemic age of COVID-19

Gianna Cappello¹, Maria Ranieri²

¹ Dept. of Cultures and Societies, University of Palermo, Italy
² Dept. of Education, Languages, Interculture, Literatures, and Psychology, University of Florence, Italy

This  special  issue  collects  a  series  of  interdisciplinary  contributions  on  the  impact  of  COVID-19  with  a  focus  on  the  intersection  point  of  media/technologies/education.  It  includes  empirical  papers  as  well  as  commentaries  and  best  practices  on  the  challenges  raised by  the  health  emergency  especially  in  the  fields  of  communication  and  education  sciences.

Accepted: 2020-12-24 | Published Online: 2020-12-24 | DOI: 10.36253/me-10181 | full text

Media Education Journal

Journalism and fake news in the Covid-19 era. Perspectives for media education in Italy

Giannamaria Cappello, Francesca Rizzuto, Dept. of Cultures and Societies, University of Palermo, Italy

In this article, drawing from the data collected by the AGCOM during the pandemic crisis, we argue that the emergence of COVID 19 has made more evident the new relationships between the informative cybercascades, the significant need of news during a crisis, the presence of disinformation online, and the relevant consequences on collective narrations, often producing a generalized panic. We also argue that infotainment can be considered a critical turning point in the relationship between true and false in the news because of its fusion of facts, drama, and emotional narrative frames so that it is no longer possible to separate reality from media reconstruction of it. We finally argue that Media Education can help individuals unpack the complexities of this fusion and engage ‘civically’ so that, by combining critical thinking and social action, they can contribute to reconnect (news)media to vital issues such as credibility, freedom of expression, pluralism, democracy, and social change.

Accepted: 2020-10-29 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9682 | full text

Media Education Journal

La scuola va in tv. Una ricerca sulla qualità di un programma didattico al tempo del Covid 19

Maria Ranieri, Cristina Gaggioli, Arianna Cinotti, Silvia Ercoli, University of Florence, Italy

The history of Italian public television presents many educational programs created with the aim of offering a cultural and educational service supporting the school. The closure of the school, due to the health emergency from Covid 19, has given a strong incentive to the use of technologies in education, while highlighting the presence of an important digital divide. The Italian public television broadcaster (RAI) launched the programme “La Banda dei FuoriClasse” to support children and adolescents after the closure of schools, and integrate the public educational offer. The paper presents the results of a research promoted by RAI Gulp, University of Florence and University of Palermo, for the monitoring and evaluation of the didactic and communicative quality of the program. A specific grid was developed and 105 observation grids were collected for each episode. The results indicate that “La banda dei fuoriclasse” was highly appreciated by the listening group for the technical and didactic aspects that characterize the program, with a strong emotional implication.

Accepted: 2020-10-30 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9975 | full text

Media Education Journal

Home-schooling during the pandemic: A push for digital education in German classrooms?!

Nadine Elstrodt-Wefing, Ute Ritterfeld, Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany

The COVID-19 home-schooling situation has become a catalyst for educational institutions to search for and deploy innovative solutions within a relatively short period of time. Since many teachers have been forced to employ technical or digital approaches with which they have had little to no prior experience, this situation might give rise to a push for digital education. In the present study we employed a two-part interview-survey to investigate how home-schooling affects German teachers’ general technical affinity and their digital teaching competence during home-schooling. Furthermore, the qualitative properties of the implementation of home-schooling were explored. The results of the study revealed that the teachers’ digital teaching competence, but not their technical affinity, changed during the pandemic. An increase in digital teaching competence was only identifiable for the first weeks of the pandemic. Qualitative analyses showed that the teachers used three different types of educational tools: (1) digital tools, (2) analogue tools, and (3) technical tools. Over the course of the pandemic the usage of those tools became more structured. However, structures were mostly built on a micro-level, e.g., by individual teachers for their classes; no macro-structures like class-comprehensive rules or even strategy papers for digital teaching were developed.

Accepted: 2020-10-08 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9686 | full text

Media Education Journal

Participation?! Educational Challenges for Young Refugees in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Michi S. Fujii¹, Jana Hüttmann², Nadia Kutscher¹, Henrike Friedrichs-Liesenkötter²

¹ University of Cologne, Germany
² Leuphana University Luneburg, Germany

This article focuses the educational settings in the everyday life of young refugees in the context of distance education under the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. It explores dimensions and intensifications of education-related digital inequality during this period in formal and non-formal educational settings. Based on ethnographic interviews with teachers, young refugees and social workers, different dimensions of inequality as well as interrelations between informal (leisure), non-formal (child and youth welfare) and formal (school) educational contexts for empowering the educational participation of young refugees, especially regarding online learning, are discussed. The empirical data show that during the period of distance education the specific needs of young refugees are only taken into account to a limited extent and thus increasing risks of exclusion from education emerge. Lack of technical access, media expertise, language skills and personal support turn out to be major challenges in enabling educational participation of vulnerable groups such as young refugees. Therefore, educational policy at federal and national level in Germany needs to outline a scheme on how to meet these challenges by further developing non-formal as well as formal educational support structures.

Accepted: 2020-10-21 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9605 | full text

Media Education Journal

La scuola come polo educativo e socio-culturale nell’era pandemica del COVID-19

Emanuela Repetto, Dipartimento di eccellenza di Filosofia e Scienze dell’Educazione, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy

The school and the institutions of the local community play a complementary role on how the educational system currently works, as well as on its desired transformation. In light of the changes that the pandemic imposes on a structural and regulatory level, it is necessary to reorient reflection and research also on pedagogical models that can facilitate a transformation process already underway before the pandemic and that the current situation brings to the fore. One way could be to favor the contamination between formal knowledge and the repertoire of knowledge and educational practices spread throughout the territory. In this mutual contamination, the role of digital technologies and educational media appears crucial, which will be explored in this contribution by defining, through a taxonomic model, some scenarios on the possible educational initiatives that arise from the alliance between school and territory. These scenarios, in addition to offering solutions to address the risks posed by the pandemic situation, represent an opportunity to innovate the educational system.

Accepted: 2020-10-15 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9673 | full text

Media Education Journal

Didattica e apprendimento nei musei nell’era della pandemia di COVID-19

Marinella Muscarà, Alessandro Romano

Università Kore di Enna, Italy

Moving from the consideration that the museum does not represent only a place of preservation, collection and promotion of cultural heritage but a vital learning space, the article aims to investigate the role that technologies and media have played in the museum during the first phase of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the authors reflect on the issues of the recognition of some museum practices as educational practices, on the use of technologies for cultural heritage education and for its use and on the digital initiatives proposed by museums in order to reconnect with the variety publics, in particular children and young people, during the period of social isolation. There is therefore a need, also in the context of non-formal learning, to reconsider the value of ICT to redesign and reshape teaching and learning practices, outlining new perspectives and educational implications.

Accepted: 2020-10-01 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9645 | full text

Media Education Journal

La didattica universitaria a distanza durante e dopo la pandemia: impatto e prospettive di una misura emergenziale

Federico Zannoni

Università degli Studi di Bologna, Italy

Participation in online lessons, delivered on virtual platforms to replace traditional face-to-face activities, took on a significant role in the daily life of numerous university students during the quarantine imposed on a national scale in response to the pandemic emergency. A qualitative survey conducted on a sample of students enrolled in the School of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Bologna allowed to analyse the impact and the factors of positivity and negativity of online lessons, providing elements to reflect on possible developments, when this method will cease to be bound to the emergency, to become an opportunity to be integrated with traditional face-to-face learning.

Accepted: 2020-10-01 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-8979 | full text

Media Education Journal

Valuations by Spanish university students on online assessment in times of pandemic

Enrique Javier Díez-Gutiérrez¹, Katherine Gajardo Espinoza²

¹ Universidad de León, Spain
² Universidad de Valladolid, Spain

This study describes the assessment that university students make regarding the model of evaluation of Higher Education during the period of confinement by COVID-19 in Spain. We developed a descriptive study through an online questionnaire designed from the assessment and qualification proposals presented by Spanish Network of University Quality Agencies (REACU), The National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), UNESCO and the Spanish Ministry of Universities. Following its application to a sample of 1008 students from across the country, it is observed that university students demand greater flexibility in online assessment, introduce learning-oriented assessment practices in accordance with a formative and continuous assessment approach, in addition to using various strategies and instruments. However, they are reluctant to introduce peer evaluation mechanisms, although they do propose democratic evaluation. The future of Higher Education, after COVID-19, is adopting hybrid and mixed models of training and evaluation, so it is imperative to investigate students’ vision and analyse the practices developed during the crisis to reinforce an assessment in Higher Education that ensures equity and enhances learning.

Accepted: 2020-10-31 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9619 | full text

Media Education Journal

Costruire strumenti per lo sviluppo dell’intelligenza visuo-spaziale in età prescolare: il modello software VIEP-app

Rosa Vegliante, Sergio Miranda

Università di Salerno, Italy

The health emergency caused by Covid-19 and the suspension of teaching activities in presence have required a total rethinking of the school system. Kindergarten has been most affected by the consequences of an exclusively remote system. The purpose of this paper is to present the theoretical-empirical premises of a playful-educational software model, the VIEP-app, a user-friendly application, aimed at increasing visual-spatial skills through a cognitive enhancement program that could be used in distance learning experiences. From a methodological point of view, this paper reports the experimental evidence relating to the connection between visual-spatial intelligence and the preschool period, using first and second level studies (systematic reviews or meta-analyzes). The review process made it possible to aggregate the different sources into three thematic areas: (i) the components of working memory; (ii) the exercise on executive functions in visual-spatial tests; (iii) the didactic effectiveness of the cognitive enhancement programs. The paper also concludes with some summary considerations on the possible research trends and their advancements are presented.

Accepted: 2020-10-20 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9637 | full text

Media Education Journal

(Dis)connessi? Alunni, genitori e insegnanti di fronte all’emergenza Covid-19

Mariagrazia Santagati, Paolo Barabanti

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

Even if the alarm caused by coronavirus in Italy has actually arisen as a medical emergency, it soon became apparent that there would be may other spill-over effects. The education system has been one of the first areas which have been adversely affected by this pandemic, as schools and university have been closed since the very first weeks. Schools have thus begun to build new ways of schooling in order to keep in contact with students and families and to go on with teaching activities. This article aims to focus on students’, parents’ and teachers’ educational experience in the time of the Covid-19 emergency. After a brief study of the situation of the Italian school before this pandemic, the paper seeks to investigate the lockdown effect on the school-family relationships and on the way of schooling during this emergency time. Findings show that distant learning has caused tensions and difficulties among teachers, students and parents, but at the same time it has enabled to reflect and to build new unexpected ways of drawing connections, guaranteeing socializing and refiguring the school on its role both of transmitting knowledge and of training the future citizens.

Accepted: 2020-11-01 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9646 | full text

Media Education Journal

Il virus incontrollato dell’infodemia

Igor Scognamiglio¹, Diana Salzano²

¹ Dipartimento di Scienze formative, psicologiche e della comunicazione, Università degli studi di Napoli “Suor Orsola Benincasa”, Italy
² Dipartimento di Studi Politici e Sociali, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy

The aim of the present paper is to argue, from a critical perspective, the theme of fake news and online misinformation about Covid19 disease and to investigate the role of infodemic (developed in mainstream and online communication) in determining a difficult management of behaviors and emotions. Moreover, the paper aims to investigate the role of the new opinion leaders of online communication (more experienced users or communicators at the service of mainstream information agencies), able to facilitate the interpretation of events. These particular types of stakeholders breathe new life into the “two steps flow of communication” model theorized by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955). Furthermore, through the thought of Castells and the agenda setting paradigm, the paper emphasizes the role of the media construction of news and of the theming and indexing processes in the representation of the Covid19 epidemic. In this regard, the infodemic is analyzed as a hyper-thematization process. The news framing operation about the Coronavirus disease is important to understand how fear spreads and how much is fondamental the role of media (and digital) education to properly manage news.

Accepted: 2020-11-01 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9933 | full text

Media Education Journal

La TV educativa al tempo del COVID-19. Analisi del programma RAI “Diario di casa”

Luciano Di Mele, Erica Della Valle

Università Telematica Internazionale Uninettuno, Italy

During phase 2 of the COVID emergency, Rai and the Ministry of Education signed an agreement called #lascuolanonsiferma. The purpose of this study is to deepen and analyze “Diario di casa”, a program that aimed to inform the children of the school and their families about the coronavirus emergency. “Home diary” is an educational program for children, but also for adults. The analysis was conducted on 7 episodes of the program using Voicethread to comment, in an interactive way, each episode following a shared observation grid that also highlighted the psycho-pedagogical aspects.

Accepted: 2020-10-22 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9642 | full text

Media Education Journal

Dilemmi digitali e governance dell’identità digitale dei minori: l’interazione fra pari come opportunità informale di media education

Davide Cino

Università di Milano-Bicocca, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione/ Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione e dello Spettacolo, Italy

The contribution investigates parents’ digital dilemmas associated with sharenting as an informal learning opportunity to rethink and orient their online sharing behavior. The paper reports on some results of an exploratory study based on the analysis of online conversations on a parenting forum focused on these dilemmas. Findings suggest that the interactional context where such exchange takes place can function as an informal learning environment, fostering informal peer-to-peer media education practices for parents in the digital age.

Accepted: 2020-10-31 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9027 | full text

Media Education Journal

La scuola dell’Infanzia alla prova dei LEAD: l’esperienza del territorio marchigiano

Laura Ceccacci

MI, Ministero dell’Istruzione, Italy

The Kindergartens faced an extremely difficult time due to the suspension of face-to-face teaching activities during the health emergency. They were supported by Infancy Commission, who published the document “Pedagogical Guidelines”, with indications for maintaining the relationship through Distance Educational Links (LEADs). They were also supported by territorial training teams for the National Digital School Plan (PNSD). The study was performed during a teachers’ training course in the Marche region, to collect data in order to define the most critical areas in distance learning for younger children. It will promote the next course design. Teamwork teachers emerged as a strength, while critical issues were identified, with reference to the DigCompEdu framework, in the areas: Digital resources, Differentiation and personalization, Responsible use of digital.

Accepted: 2020-10-30 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9644 | full text

Media Education Journal

Pandemia, controllo digitale e democrazia: un’esperienza DaD di Filosofia e Media education

Lia De Marco, Liceo “G. Bianchi Dottula” Bari, Italy

This article presents the teaching experience Pandemic, digital control and democracy conducted in the 5th AU and 5th BU classes of the “G. Bianchi Dottula” of Bari in the months of March and April 2020, in the lockdown period due to the Covid-19 health emergency. The path, based on the combination of research-action methods, consisted in the discussion of philosophical issues in a transversal perspective through a targeted DaD approach (with the help of Padlet, Google Classroom, Google Meet, Screen-cast-o-matic, Rai Scuola and many others), in view of the State Exams. In a historical moment in which the discussion on the present is of extreme urgency and the awareness of the processes in progress is decisive, the narration of this good practice could contribute to the sharing of didactically effective experiences in consideration of the next DDI.

Accepted: 2020-10-24 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9650 | full text

Media Education Journal

Didattica Inclusiva a Distanza: tecnologie e tecniche per l’Inclusione di studenti con disabilità visiva

Lucia Maffione, MI, Ministero dell’Istruzione, Italy

This contribution illustrates the activation of an inclusive teaching practice realized during the suspension of face-to-face lessons, due to the Covid 19 epidemic. The purposes of the intervention were: to respond to the student’s learning special needs, with visual disabilities and attending the Secondary School, as well as to achieve the objectives of her individualized educational plan. Throughout the article many various didactic techniques, software, aids, e-tivity and online open resources are presented to implement inclusive distance learning.

Accepted: 2020-10-30 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9608 | full text

Media Education Journal

Voci di speranza, una significativa esperienza di didattica a distanza che ha colmato le distanze

Roberta Gianesin, Insegnante presso l’Istituto comprensivo Francesco d’Assisi di Tezze sul Brenta, Italy

In the s.y. 2019-20 I followed a project born from the collaboration between the comprehensive school Francesco d’Assisi in Tezze sul Brenta (VI) where I work as a religion teacher and the radio station Radio Oreb, to give children a voice on inclusive issues. A mediaeducational project that has fostered communication, the exchange of experiences and emotions and which allowed children to feel close to each other during the Covid-19 emergency.

Accepted: 2020-10-11 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9661 | full text

Media Education Journal

Students teaching other students

Valentina Pagani, Centro internazionale di Studi sulla Ricerca Educativa (CISRE), Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic situation that overwhelmed us still strongly questions university teaching today. The research reports a classroom’s activity based on self-assessment (SA) and peer-feedback (PF)activities. The result is connected to the combination of three key points for effective teaching: 1) an active role of the students involved in the activity, 2) an effective use of technology based on a Student Response System (SRS), and 3) a sustained pedagogical training for teachers suddenly catapulted to new teaching methods. The design used, developed in the Italian university context, can be developed totally online, guaranteeing new skills and new learning, in view of a hypothetical, and not so unexpected, return to distance learning.

Accepted: 2020-10-30 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9012 | full text

Media Education Journal

L’uso dei media da parte dei musei nell’era della pandemia Covid-19: criticità e potenzialità

Daniela Benedetti

Museo Civico Antonio Parazzi di Viadana, Italy

The closing to the public due to the health emergency led museums to publish on the web a considerable amount of digital contents, in several cases self-produced. The modest diffusion in the Italian museums of a planned and conscious use of digital communication, resulting in part from the peculiarities of the national scene, revealed during the pandemic. It’s appropriate move from the need to provide over the internet displays of resilience or contents alternatives to the possibility to go to the museum to a rethinking of the online offer, extremely challenging task for the several small and medium Italian museums, with few professional and economic resources.

Accepted: 2020-10-11 | Published Online: 2020-11-02 | DOI: 10.36253/me-9649 | full text

The planetary epidemic has generated consequences on daily life of humanity: the article reflects on the positive and negative effects of Covid-19 and points out the role of pedagogy in this context, suggesting the goals of contemporary education and preserving the humanity.

Published Online: 2020-07–03 | DOI: 10.13128/ssf-11827 | full text

Studi sulla Formazione – Open Journal of Education

Distanza-presenza una dicotomia sbagliata

Giovanni Biondi

Presidente INDIRE